Last of all came two-year-old Patjo, who was described by one of my sisters as “just like his father, big, strong, good-looking, and useless.”
Such comments infuriated the child’s mother, but I never did dispute them. I did hope that Patrick Joseph would graduate from college at the appropriate time instead of failing at both the Dome and Marquette. But I also hoped he would never let his studies interfere with his education. Herself agreed completely.
“Haven’t I been saying all the time that you’re the best-educated man I know, Dermot Michael? The poor little fat punk will be blessed if he ever knows all that you know.”
“I was a fat baby too.”
“See, I’m always right.”
“Yes, you are.”
I wasn’t sure about what, but it didn’t matter.
So I kissed the kids good-bye and patted the two hounds who never liked to see anyone go away, and themselves not being sure we’d come back, and kissed Nuala and off I went to Maywood and meself knowing that I would think of her all the way.
And recall the images of our love the night before. If we were to avoid the family mess that had overwhelmed Jack Donlan it would be Nuala’s doing not mine.
“So you believe that your sister will never accept her new stepmother?”
“I don’t think so.”
“And where does that leave you?”
Mary Fran considered that question for a moment.
“I’ll have to make up my mind, won’t I? Evie was furious at me because I sneaked into the Church for the wedding and that I then went to the reception.”
“You went to the Mass at the cathedral?”
“I didn’t know about it. I’m sure the others wouldn’t attend.”
“All three of you were there outside of St. Freddy’s?”
“Evie said we should see how vulgar she looked. . . . I didn’t think she looked vulgar at all. I thought she was gorgeous . . . and that Daddy was a very lucky man.”
“And to hear what the priest said when he ordered them out of the church?”
“That was as much a surprise to us as it was to everyone.”
“Might Evie have received it from someone and passed it on to the priest?”
She thought about that.
“I doubt it, Mr. Coyne, uh, Dermot. She would have lorded it over us as soon as she received it. It might have come from the same source as the original letter but not through us. Evie was ecstatic. She said it proved she had been right all along.”
“And what did that original letter say?”
“You have eyes just like your father’s.”
“Even when I’m playing my role as a private eye?”
“Asking questions for your adorable wife.”
“The last one of which you have not answered.”
She opened the single drawer in her desk. “I scribbled a copy of it when Evie wasn’t watching,” she said as she handed me a single sheet of computer paper. “She wouldn’t let the original out of her hands. It was a scrawl on a lined page of notebook paper.”
Your new mom is a whore. Out in Oakdale everyone knows she screws every man she’s working on a deal with. They keep count of her victims. There’s twelve of them that are common knowledge. She didn’t take over that company because of her intelligence. She’s a regular punch card. The guys she fucks know her reputation, but they can’t keep their fly zipped when she puts out. She takes a lot of money away from them because they can’t think straight. She’s already taken from your asshole father and she’ll clean him out before she’s finished. She’ll take your inheritance if you don’t watch her every move.
It was, I thought, not so much an obscene letter as a letter from someone who was trying to give the impression that she was a truck driver. I used the word she advisedly—a proper woman trying to sound dirty.
“Can I take this?”
“Sure.”
“What do you think of it?”
“Maybe a jealous middle-age woman pretending to be a truck driver . . . Evie should have torn it up and thrown it away. But she was looking for dirt. It was all she needed to organize the family against Ms. Connors.”
I slid the paper into the pocket of my trademark yuppie navy blue blazer. I’m not a real yuppie because real yuppies don’t flunk out of college, do they? But it’s a helpful image when I am carrying the spear for Nuala Anne. A nice, wholesome-looking professional wouldn’t be mixed up with Bronze Age superstition, would he?
I thanked her and gave her my card, which carries just my name and my e-mail address. It does NOT say “Spear Carrier.”
“Working for that dangerous daughter-in-law of mine . . . Mother of my favorite grandchildren?” my father said when I stuck my head into his office to pay my respects. “Let’s see—to give them their Christian names—Mary Anne, Michael, Sarah, and Patrick.”
My folks have never been able to get their tongues around Socra Marie.
“Trying to earn an honest buck in the garden of good and evil.”
“Well, that young woman is one of the best students we’ve had here in a long time.”
Dad was telling me that he knew what I was doing around the Med Center.
“Maybe you should go to work for herself,” I responded. We both laughed.
The theory in the family is that Nuala Anne is the nice girl I brought home from Ireland who had forced me to grow up, though not nearly enough. They don’t propose it to her anymore because those luminous blue eyes of hers turn as dark as storm clouds rushing in from the North Atlantic. The myth of shiftless Dermot will never die. Just as well. When I hear it from my sisters, I reply, “At least I taught her to wear shoes.”
On my way back to East Lincoln Park (a more pretentious community name than “DePaul”) I drove through my own “old neighborhood” River Forest, just to convince myself that the Italians hadn’t ruined it yet.
(When I was young, the Irish in our suburban enclave were considerably upset at the migration of Italians from their “old neighborhood” on Taylor Street. They would “ruin” the neighborhood, it was whispered. In fact they were zealous in their home and landscape improvements, though their exuberant Christmas decorations were deemed “tacky.” Which just goes to show you.)
That reminded me that I should talk to my old friend and classmate Dominic. A man who was clearly connected but clean. This meant that the money for his electronics firm may have had some shady antecedents but Dom himself was not involved directly with the outfit and that he used no outfit thugs to promote his electronics firm. I have his private number in my cell phone and he responded immediately. “Dominic.”
“Hey, Dominic, it’s Dermot! What’s happening?”
“Hey, Dermot, what’s happenin’? I hear that your beautiful wife is gonna cream this Triple A crook from Hollywood?”
“It’s going down today, Dom. It looks like we’re going to win.”
Triple A was the name the Chicago media had assigned to Archibald Adolf Abercrombie, the president of Consolidated Television Network who was trying to stifle the Nuala Anne Christmas show. A tall, dynamic, and totally bald man, he treated Chicago media and Chicago judges and lawyers as though they were ignorant peasants standing in the way of progress. Not a particularly wise stance for somebody engaging in litigation that was dubious at best.
“Hey, Dom, you hear what went down in front of my house over in Lincoln Park yesterday?”
“No, I didn’t hear. What happened?”
“A couple of individuals in a stolen car pull up to the house and get out carrying what looked like baseball bats or maybe large salami sausages. You know what certain kinds of people used to do with those?” to the house and get out carrying what looked like baseball bats or maybe large salami sausages. You know what certain kinds of people used to do with those?”
“Dumb! Dumb! I can’t believe anybody would do that in Chicago these days, much less to you and your family. I’ve told you often that the friends of my friends respect you
and admire her greatly.”
“Yeah, well, it was kind of a mess. Our wolfhounds got angry and howled and you know what it’s like when wolfhounds start howling. These individuals climbed back in their car and pulled away. We got their license number but the car was stolen.”
“Sincerely, Dermot, I’m sure that no one who is a friend of my friends would do that kind of thing but let me find out. Okay?”
“I sincerely believe you, but I’m just asking that you check it out to see if your friends know who was behind this caper.”
“Yeah, yeah, Dermot, I understand. We’ll look into it. And I sincerely assure you that whoever was doing it won’t do it again. They’ll be warned off. You can count on that.”
“I’m happy to hear that, Dominic, and I sincerely believe what you say. Tell the friends of your friends we don’t want to complicate this one. I’m on what went down at the marriage between the Sabattini woman from Oakdale and our very good friend here in Chicago John Patrick Donlan.”
“He was born with the gift of laughter and the sense that the world was mad.”
So Dominic had read Scaramouche? Strange world. “You got it, Dom.”
“Oh yeah I heard about that. Really a strange one. So you’re working on that case?”
“Trying to straighten it out a little.”
“Sabattini, I’ve heard of them. She’s supposed to be totally clean and a very nice lady. Her brothers are no good, no good at all punks. . . . Yeah, and a fake letter in church? The punks have been watching too many episodes of The Sopranos.”
“The brothers might not be involved. . . .”
“Yeah, but they know about it. Just a few quiet words whispered into their ears. They’re such lowlifes that even a whisper from the friends of my friends will scare the shit out of them, you should excuse the expression. Pleasure to help you, Dermot.”
“I sincerely trust you and believe you, Dominic. Let me know what the friends of your friends are able to un-earth.”
The Outfit, as we call them in Chicago (or sometimes “the boys”) are a group of serious businessmen. Some of their businesses are legit and some are not and some are somewhere in between. Crime interferes with business. So they try to keep a lid on crime as best they can, other people’s crime. Like Blacks and Latinos and punks from out of town. It also brings in the Feds who are not very effective in their periodic campaigns against the Outfit, but who can create inconveniences. If they discover that punks, from out of town or Chicago, are messing around without asking permission, they are extremely upset. If you have good relations with them, they’ll keep you informed about what’s going on and what’s going down. One deals with them through intermediaries and communicates in a kind of code. They’ll do favors for you without necessarily picking up a marker.
So Dominic might say to me (though he never has), “I don’t think I can help you on that one, Dermot. I sincerely wish I could.”
That means the wiseguys are involved and to mess around could be dangerous.
Or he might say (as he sometimes has), “My friends tell me that their friends are aware of the situation and are taking care of it.”
That means exactly what it says and adds the suggestion, “you’d better stay out of it.”
Or yet again, “Please tell your friends that we’ll clean up the mess.”
When you agree to pass on the message they will have picked up a marker.
That meant that the cops should stay out of it (or the state’s attorney, or Mike Casey, or even the Feds).
The Feds pretend that they eschew such communications with sworn enemies. But they engage in them as much as anyone else. It eliminates a lot of mess.
The boys take good care of me because I saved Dominic’s life when we were in high school, which gives me a kind of unlimited marker. I don’t use it much, in part because the thrill could become addictive.
I turned on the car radio to pick up the noon news.
Harold Hastings was reporting, one of my favorites because he is skilled in very mild African-American English, a creative and humorous dialect that deserves more respect.
“Triple A got himself canceled this morning in the Dirksen Federal building. The National Bureau of Standards obtained a permanent injunction against the man so he could not interfere with their production of the Nuala Anne McGrail Christmas special this year. Old Triple A canceled the series, which had another year to run on its contract. NBS picked it up with considerable enthusiasm as you might imagine. The tycoon of CTN came to town to block such a switch. He didn’t want Ms. McGrail on his network or anyone else’s and he was not about to negotiate a termination agreement with her production company. As Federal Judge Ebenezer Brown commented in granting a permanent injunction, Mr. Abercrombie’s lawyers should explain to him contract law. Even in Hollywood you cannot terminate a contract short of a termination date and still control the other party of the contract. Mr. Abercrombie announced that they would immediately appeal the decision. ‘It’s our show. If we decided not to present it, we will not permit anyone else to present it. Christmas with Nuala Anne is dead, permanently dead.’
“Gerard Mooney of the Chicago firm of Moody, Mooney, Meany, and Mularky, who represented NBS, remarked that ole Triple A must never have heard the story of the Dog in the Manger.
“Mary Anne Coyne, a spokesperson for Ms. McGrail, said that the immensely popular singer was unavailable for comment because she was practicing songs for the special.”
Mary Anne Coyne was not a spokesperson for her mother.
I punched in the Heart Line Number intended for exclusive use of meself and me wife.
“Nuala Anne McGrail’s line,” my daughter informed me.
“Are you Ms. McGrail’s spokesperson?”
“Is that you, Pa?” she said with a giggle.
“Possibly.”
“I’ll get Ma.”
A louder giggle.
“Dermot, we beat the nine-fingered shitehawk!”
“The shitehawk in the manger . . . Woman, you’re violating the child labor law!”
“She’s your daughter!”
“You hired her!”
“I have to practice me singing. Won’t I be talking to you when you get home? . . . Did you like me ‘dog in the manger’ line?
“Wasn’t it grand!”
“Love you, spear-carrier!”
She hung up.
Bitch.
Go long with ya, you’re proud of her!
Nuala Anne
“I’M SORRY to disturb you on a day which is so important to you,” Maria Connors began hesitantly.
“Och, don’t fret your soul about it,” I replied, slipping into me ma’s reassurance style. “Hasn’t poor Mr. Triple A dug himself into a hole which his stockholders won’t like at all, at all, so we’ll probably win, perhaps even with enough time to get the show together. It was supposed to be the last one anyhow. Sure, I’ve been thinking all year that this would be the last one anyway. We maybe need a rest from it, but NBS wants a two-year commitment. . . .”
“You must be a very busy woman, Nuala?”
She was wearing black trousers and a fluffy white blouse over the waist with a thick black belt holding the whole thing together. She was beautiful altogether and her boobs were firm and perfect underneath the blouse. But what was the point in hating her?
I was holding me youngest in me arms. He was about to fall asleep, an impulse which, like his father, he rarely resisted.
“Handsome little guy,” she said.
“They say he’s lazy, just like his father, but me Dermot is anything but lazy. He’s just laid back, as this little punk . . . I think I’ll put him down now. He won’t bother us again.”
I hummed me favorite lullaby, the Connemara, as I carried Patjo up to his room. . . . Blow winds blow . . .
Maeve had followed me upstairs. It was her turn to supervise the boys’ room.
Fiona, and herself napping, was lying at Maria’s feet.
; “Sweet, sweet dog . . .” she said, stroking the massive head.
“And a lifesaver too sometimes . . . How’s business?”
“So far, so good, down a little bit maybe, but it’s Monday morning and the holidays and our usual yuppie clients are busy on other forms of consumerism.”
“Don’t be a cynic, Maria, you’re not one, not anymore.”
“You see too much, Nuala Anne,” she said, blushing. “I have a story to tell you, however, that may have an impact on the puzzle. I haven’t told it to Jack yet, but I will this evening. He deserves a warning of what might happen.”
Now I may be a tad fey, and I may see auras around people’s heads—Maria’s was a kind of dusky rose gold—but a confessor or a counselor or a spiritual director I am not and I’m not sure I want to be.
“He’ll love you just as much as he did before you told him and maybe more.”
“It’s about my affair, fling, fall from grace Whatever with Congressman Stafford of our district. He lost in the election a couple of weeks ago. Kishwaukee County, which has had a lot of war casualties, beat him into the ground. Oakdale went overwhelmingly against him, though he never won a majority from our voters.”
“And yourself the precinct captain, aren’t you?”
“I always campaigned against him even before our fling. Since then I have worked even harder, though I realized that it might be risky. . . . You may not have seen any pictures of him. He’s a big, good-looking man, broad shoulders, long gray hair, big smile, oozes charm. I always thought the charm was a bit sinister. I should have been wary, but I wasn’t.”
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